By: Dana
Summary: A picnic at the beach.
Characters: Pippin, Merry, Sam, Frodo-lad, Elanor, Rosie
Pairings: None
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Written for a challenge. A set of five drabbles. I got carried away.
Disclaimer: The author makes no claim to owning the rights of anything to do with J.R.R. Tolkien or New Line Cinema. Any and all characters and situations that have been borrowed are for the author's personal use only, and for the entertainment of others.

The water was shallow - the waves were slapping gently against Pippin's long legs as he waded out further. The water was warm - the warm salt-sweet smell of the sea - and the sand against the soles of his feet was smooth.

He stopped when the water reached his fingertips. "Pippin," Merry called from the shore (and that was where Sam was, too, and Rosie, and their family, Elanor, Frodo-lad, Rose-lass, Merry-lad, too and it had been his own suggestion that brought them to this picnic at the sea), but Pippin didn't look back.

It wasn't quite time to return. Not yet.

Pippin had waded out into the water - shallow, still, and he was long enough now that more than half of his too tall body could be seen. "Just give him time," Sam said, and Merry would have had to be blind to not see how Sam had made a point to not look toward the sea. (And Merry would have had to be dumb as well as having to be blind to know that, for Sam, it was still too soon.)

When Sam did look, maybe when he thought he wasn't being watched, the sun had turned the water gold.

Elanor was looking at the sand in wonder. It was hard and gritty and it got under her nails. She could build with it, a long lump of yellow-brown that was a smial and a round shell that she made its door. "What are you making there, Elanorelle?" her uncle Merry asked.

"Our smial at the sea," she said with a grin.

Her uncle Merry said, and he looked at her Da before looking back at her. "Don't forget the gardens, Elanorelle."

His fingers were longer - his hands were, too, and she watched them make shallow patterns in the sand.

"Frodo-lad, don't put that in your mouth." Frodo squealed in displeasure and reached for Sam as Sam plucked the flat, white shell from his son's hands.

"Gimme," said Frodo, small hands wrapping around Sam's finger. He took a shallow breath.

"There's things as we'll be wanting, son, but can't have."

Frodo's eyes are wide - large, and blue, but not too blue, and they aren't another Frodo's eyes - but he's just a child and he doesn't understand.

"Gimme," said again, and he pulls on his father's thumb.

Sam let go. He couldn't bear to put hurt in his young son's eyes.

There were things never said, things that would never be, but that didn't mean that she didn't know, that she couldn't tell. There were some things that spoke more than any words; like Sam, right now, his eyes the same shallow blue-grey of the sea.

Maybe too soon, but not the end.

Pippin had come back up from the water. "There's too much sand here," he proclaimed. "I don't think I'll ever wash clean."

That didn't stop him from sitting down, wet trousers and all, at the edge of the blanket as Rosie, with a soft smile, served their meal.